Image systems including television cameras, charge coupled device imagers, forward looking infrared sensors, and infrared charge coupled device detectors produce a video image having a resolution limited by the sampling rate of the imager. Designers of such systems typically limit the sampling rate to slightly more than two samples between the first zeros of the diffraction blur (in accordance with the Nyquist criteria). The Rayleigh resolution limit (computed from the size of the aperture and the wavelength of the scene energy) described the limits of what the eye can see. A discussion of the Rayleigh limit is given in Jenkins and White, Fundamentals of Optics, McGraw-Hill, 1957 at page 304. Specifically, a minimum angle of resolution between two points for an imager having a circular aperture of diameter D sensing light wavelength .lambda. is 0.244.lambda./D radians. Accordingly, scanning imager systems are typically designed so that the scan angle subtended between adjacent samples is less than 0.122.lambda./D radians.